AP Photo | Carlos OsorioA young man is shown walking in an alley in Detroit. An economist for Moody's Economy.com tells Assignment Detroit the city's labor force must shrink to improve jobless numbers.Detroit's gloomy jobless picture would brighten substantially if only more displaced workers moved to other states with better job markets. Like Texas, for example – new home of disgraced former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

"Detroit's labor market situation has deteriorated substantially from what was already a weak level," said John Lonski, a chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.

"The only way to contract the city's unemployment rate is through migration," he added. "The jobs that were lost aren't coming back like they will in other cities after the downturn, so the unemployed individuals will have to go elsewhere to find jobs, and that will help shrink Detroit's overall workforce."

In a separate video interview, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing attributes much of the city's pain to its longtime dependence on automotive manufacturing and acknowledges "it's going to take a little bit of time I think for us to build other industries" such as film, construction and health care.

Check out the rest of the interview below.

Embedded video from CNNMoney.com Video• Leave your thoughts in the comments area below, which I regularly check. Or contact me directly at mijobsblogger (at) gmail
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